First of all i feel sorry for all the apps that the devs have lost, its feel painful, I havent had any apps banned(ive been using mopub , admob and startapp).
Looking at all the posts of the ban on friday , I’d like to ask something from other devs, did you guys recieve a message from google play to scan all the apps inside your phone ? I opened google play from my mobile today morning and I got a popup from the app, something like “do you want google play to check your apps for malware?”
You might have seen this message before or may not depending on android version. It leads me to believe google can actively scan all the installed apps on client side and pick them up and unpublish them. No hassles for them to check if the app has got 500 or 500 million downloads. Also this way they can check system interferences and red flag the sdks…
This is just my opinion on to the whole thing… maybe admob will get a whole lot of users by such bans
Out of App ads are banned.
If someone still don’t get it and use those ad formats, no one will be able to help them.
This is how these spammers are working:
When you warn them of consequences for being a spammer, they blame you.
When they get banned, They blame Ad Networks.
You have to wonder why Google didn’t just clearly put “out-of-app ad formats are prohibited” in their policy, though. It’s like they’re deliberately trying to waste the time of ad networks making new SDKs.
I just got over 150 apps suspended which were only using TapContext. However, I removed PingJam SDK just a week before. I am not sure if the apps got suspended because I previously used PingJam or because TapContext. In my opinion, both networks ad units are equally in the gray area. The account which got the apps suspended is still in good standing. But I’m not sure if it will stay so.
More interesting, I have two other accounts using StartApp. I am unable to log into the accounts. They seem to be locked or something. I am worried Google is suspending the apps or terminating the account as I write this. Will keep you posted.
Quite. If I was a Google rep, I’d just go “oh, fuck it” after the 10th one and kill the account. Then again, it might be an automated process going crazy.
It is definitely an automated process. I was logged in the account trying to unpublish before getting suspended. I was about to unpublish 30th app, then the rest got labeled as suspended. I didn’t receive any email yet.
Not sure if I understood you correctly: you removed the PingJam sdk over a week ago but still got your apps suspended a few days ago??? How’s that possible
Google, like many entities, might likely handle mass-banning in waves. They spend a certain amount of time perfecting a detection algorithm, let it run for a while, and ban everyone in one fell swoop. So just because you removed a bannable SDK before a suspension arrived, doesn’t mean Google doesn’t already have you flagged in the system.
